Peril at End House by Agatha Christie. Short summary

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Hercule Poirot and Captain Hastings meet the lovely heiress of the Endhouse, Miss Nick Buckley. The friends try to prevent the death of the girl, who is clearly being attempted by someone.

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A novel in the «Hercule Poirot» series. Hercule Poirot, along with his assistant Captain Hastings, are staying at the Majestic Hotel. Here they met a young girl Nick Buckley, the heiress of the Endhouse. Nick tells them that she has escaped death three times in the past three days. Poirot realizes that someone wants to kill the girl and intends to prevent it.

But soon Nick’s cousin Maggie dies. She died instead of Nick — the murdered girl was wearing her shawl. To protect Nick, Poirot informs everyone that she is being sent to the hospital. The next day Poirot learns that the pilot Michael Seton, with whom Nick was secretly married, is dead. The deceased bequeathed everything to his bride. Poirot convinces the girl to pretend to be dead after another assassination attempt.

In the finale, Poirot solves the mystery—all the assassination attempts were orchestrated by Nick herself, and that Michael was in fact married to Maggie. She killed Maggie to inherit Michael Seton’s money. Her name was also Magdala Buckley, and she was the one to whom the dead pilot had been engaged.

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